Training For Jumps

I was wondering..was anybody familiar with any techniques exclusive to training the muscles used for jumping? I'd love to start working on that.

Yes, I happen to know a great exercise for jumping! It's called 'jumping.' No, seriously. I think the best way to get good at jumping is to just do a lot of it. Some examples:

Find a nice wide staircase. Stand at the bottom in a low horse stance. Jump onto the next step. Repeat for as many steps as their are. Then run down and do it again.

From a horse stance, do a tornado kick and land in a horse stance (like in the eagle claw form if you did that).

Any of the jumping torture training of Chris. Also any normal leg exercises like squats, biking, etc.

You can even add weight to the exercises once you become good at them. For any of the jumping drills buy a weightvest online (http://www.weightvest.com/)... can be a bit expensive though. This particular weightvest can go up to 100 lbs if you buy the most expensive one. 100 lbs is only if you are training for the olympics though lol. Also, you can add weight to a backpack using standard weight plates, but then you have to watch out for the weight smacking you in the back. Using ankleweights for kicking also helps with jumping, just be sure you do the exercises correctly. In my experience, jumping without weight will only get you so far. After you get good at your routine, adding weight will blast you to much higher strength levels.

Do some of the drills Jason recommended, then once you get conditioned to the routine start adding weight slowly.